Pet Shop Boys Dusty, Liza

"My parents would take me to the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool. Them was a live dance band, and I remember when that song '76 Trombones' came out and they all marched on and played it... brilliant"

HAVE YOU EVER MET the Pet Shop Boys?"

I'm at a party, and the man I'm talking to is worried. He has to know. He listens to Morrissey records, he needs to understand. "Tell me," he says, "are they taking the piss?"
This is a question that seems to occupy many musically-inclined minds, and this group more than most seems to induce extreme reactions: you love them or you hate them. Either that or you're totally bemused. Is it OK to like the Pet Shop Boys? Chris Lowe, for one, doesn't care. "The whole idea of what's trendy or not is irrelevant," he says. We're sitting in a restaurant just by the studio where the Pet Shop Boys are working on backing tracks for the new album they are producing. We had one bottle too many with the meal and it's getting to that time in an evening when everyone is a little too loud, your speech sounds firth round the edges and you start getting nostalgic.
"The best night-club I've ever been to was when we were in Manchester doing a TV show," says Chris. "In the basement of the hotel there was this brilliant discotheque that played the best records - dance records that were also huge hits - and everyone just had such a fantastic time. It was a bit like The Hitman And Her, really. That's what I like about Pete Waterman he really has a great love of music and of dance records and this is what he's trying to put across in his show. And it's completely uncluttered by any ideas of what's 'in' at any particular moment, it's just what is inherently good and is liked by a lot of people."

"The music that pushes things forward is dance music," says Neil Tennant, launching into the speech he often uses to annoy American journalist. "It pushes the technology forward, and on the way it invents - rap, house, acid, Eurodisco, Newbeat - every week it develops." In America, the Pet Shop Boys are seen as progressive'. Like New Order or Depeche Mode, they're terribly English and a little too rhythmic for radio pigeonhole's. They have a plan, they claim, to record a disco album of rock classics sung by assorted pop personalities; and apparently had a hi-energy version of one of U2's most revered tracks lined up for Patsy Kensit before they fell out. They don't follow the school of thought that sees Bono and God as one and the same, and though they may be taking the piss in this case and positively revel in irony, for the most part the Pet Shop Boys are deadly serious. To understand this, it helps if you dance.

"I LOVE DANCINGING"

says Chris. Perhaps it's excitement, perhaps ir's the alcohol, but one memory seems particularly vivid. "We always used to go dancing on Sunday afternoons. My parents would take me to the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool and there was a live dance hand there. I remember when that song '76 Trombones' came out and they all marched on and played it coming through the ballroom and it was just unbelievably brilliant, fantastic!" Discos came later, of course, along with an obsession with European dance records; but those afternoons in the Tower Ballroom left an impression. Young Chris learned to play the trombone, and there was a time when the family thought he might follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, who played in a showband in Vegas. Instead he became the miserable one with the bar in the Pet Shop Boys, but he's about to redeem him self.

Back at the studio, I hear some hacking tracks for the new album they're producing. Neil sings a guide vocal on a synthesised cover of Tanita Tikaram's "Twist In My Sobriety" that could pass as a Joy Division tack with a little guitar. Chris plays keyboards with a scowl on his face and one hand in his pocket even when there's only an engineer watching. The tracks sound amazing, I say, but ] don't actually believe this will happen. I don't believe She will sing over these tracks. Everyone laughs, partly, you suspect, because they don't either. The Pet Shop Boys ate making an album with Liza Minelli. "I want to call it 'Liza With An F'," grins Chris. "An acid album. Wouldn't that be unbelievably brilliant?" The Pet Shop Boys have always been just a little hit Vegas. Neil Tennant has been to see Stephen Sondheim's follies four times already, and between her tour commitments with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jnr, they are to do a hi-energy version of one of the songs from the musical with Liza. "It has this brilliant sampled screen in the middle and she was a bit disconcerted because she knows Stephen Sondheim," he laughs. You can tell they're slightly impressed with themselves for this. They casually throw her name into the conversation -"Liza", they say, then look almost surprised that they've got away

"We just don't do what we don't want to do. I don't know why everybody not like us. You" Just phone someone up and say 'That video's not going out like that,, and slam the phone down"

with it, as if they expect a minder to loom up from under a table and say, "It's Miss Minelli to you, mate -You know," confides Neil, "she's such a star, literally one of the big scan, but she doesn't have an ego problem at all. And with dance music not being her area, so far she's deferred to us. We haven't softened it - it'd he patronising for us to make an album we wouldn't want to make ourselves." The Pet Shop Boys are still fans. Neil still treasures his David bowie autograph acquired when the Ziggy Stardust torn played to a half-empty Newcastle City Hall. And at a patty last week Bryan Ferry - the Bryan Ferry - actually recognised him and said hello. "I was quite thrilled," he admits, ignoring the Ice that he's sold more records than Bryan hoc quite a time now. "I know it's a bit pathetic, but there you are. 'Actually you get a lot of people with attitude problems -Sabrina for instance. We saw her in France at a TV show and we were going to say hello because we quite like some of her records, but she shouted past with a kind of megastar look on her face. I was quite surprised." Then there was Jimmy Tarbuck. At one point there was a plan to use his introduction of them on Sunday Night At The London Paltachum as a link in their video compilation, Television.

The TV company agreed, but Tarby refused. "He said we were miserable bastards, so we couldn't have it," says Neil. "I was quite proud, really. And all because we wouldn't wave at the end! "It's a major issue, us and waving, See, the problem with pop music nowadays is it's perceived once again as it was in the early Sixties as a branch of show-business. Because pop stars have done these shows ironically, because we thought, 'Wouldn't it he great to sing "Rent" on the London Palladium dressed in rubber', unfortunately that gets translated as just another way to promote your record. And suddenly Kyle and Co are there on stage, smiling for the Royal, without a trace of irony at all. And you're expected to do things their way, like waving at the end and pretending that you're all friends and everything's wonderful. I remember as a child seeing The Beatles or the Stones on a show or jimi Hendrix on the Lulu Show, and the whole point of pop being on a variety show is that it's like someone has landed from another planet by mistake."

WHERE THE PET Shop Boys do take the piss is this business of being pop stars.

The limo in San Remo, going to Sam Fox's birthday party at Stringlfellows, the Japanese Tv shows and the Limelight Star Bar. You can't actually take these things seriously; if you do, you become Mart Goss, hiding in the offices of Tom Watkins (the inanager Neil and Chris share with Bros), complaining that yon can't do your shopping for being recognised. It was down to Neil to gently point out that not many people wear shades and ripped jeans in December, and it would help, perhaps, if he didn't walk around town dressed in his stage clothes. Bros method-act, they're in role all the time. The Pet Shop Boys get to step outside every now and then, watch the whole pop cavalcade drive pest, and laugh at its absurdity at the same time as loving it. Neil is still impressed by older stars and disperses career advice to younger ones. He is very taken by the act that Bananarama and Fat Tony can recite the whole of Abigail's P-y when drank. Chris is particularly proud of the lact that the security man In reception has tried to stop him walking into the offices of his label, EMI, and when stopped in the street, he simply denies he's that bloke from that band: "But I wish I were, mate, I wish I were.

The music, though, is a different matter, and in the studio the pair are deadly serious, meticulous to a fault. Their insistence chat every' sound, every beat, has to be right has been known to move grown engineers - not a species known for their sensitivity - close to tears. They work mainly on keyboards and computers; more traditional instruments are distasteful, too rock'n'roll. This is what caused their problem with Patsy Kensit. "We did kind of fill out," admits Neil. "Not so much with Patsy than with her manager and CBS." The problem was that Eighth Wonder are a group. 'We can't work like that, with guitars, a drummer and things." So it was agreed that they'd produce a Patsy Kensit record, with control over the video and packaging. Eventually, of course, it came out as Eighth Wonder with the usual glamour cover. 'Patsy has a problem in that she tends to be marketed as a sex symbol, where] think she's got a lot more going for her,' says Neil. Their own version of "I'm Not Scared" came out on the "Introspective" album, and this is history now, an old quarrel that ended with them returning their Chris contracts with rude remarks scribbled over them. "In many wars, to he honest, we shouldn't have asked for too much control because it was stupid - we realise that now.

Control is central to the Pet Shop Boys' philosophy. Some see Tom Watkins - an interior designer and "the latest in a line of Svengalis who know what little girls like", according to a Time Out article last summer - as the man behind the Boys. A former Conran and Fitch employee, the feature accused him of packaging his pop groups like High St stores - Bros were his Habitat, Neil and Chris either Conran's or BRS, depending on your view. It only takes an hour or two with the Pet Shop Boys to realise that the idea of anyone packaging them into anything they didn't want is patently absurd. Take the case of the ripped leans.

"There was a meeting right at the start about ripped jeans," explains Neil, "when I was still at Smash Hits." "We were sitting around the table in the hoard room, continues Chris (they have a way of finishing each other's stories), "with a stylist and Tom, and everyone was talking away about the style of the Pet Shop Boys. It was horrid, I hated everything about it. I was so mad I was steaming." "So there were no ripped jeans. Chris just said we'd wear black and that's what we did. Tom was always very frustrated with us because we'd never do anything he suggested. He once said, 'Neil, can't I have any influence over your career at all?' But then when Bros happened, he was to rally vindicated. It was everything he'd ever wanted to do - the hi-energy records with fanny lyrics, the ripped denims - and it's the biggest thing that's ever been since . . . the. flay City Rollers." From record sleeves to mixes, they insist on seeing everything, hearing everything. If the Pet Shop Boys look silly or ugly in their press shots, it's because they want to. Even an extended edit of their last video - intended only for showing in Us clubs - has to be seen and approved by them before it can go out. "We just don't do what we don't want to do," shrugs Chris. "I don't know why everybody's not like us. You lust phone someone up and say, 'That video's not going to go out like that,' and slam

"If something's good, why change ft? You wouldn't do a mix of 'What's Going On' by Marvin Gaye, would you? Well actually, maybe people would these days"

I the phone down. Then they change it. "I can never believe it when you see pop groups. in magazines saying, 'We didn't want to record this song, hut the record company made us,' You can't niaje somebody go to the studio," adds Neil, disingenuously ignoring a whole series of financial pressures that can be applied to artists who don't toe corporate lines. "When we first signed to EMI WC were nothing, and we could always do exactly what we wanted to - maybe they just had faith in us. We tend to assume it's the norm. "Actually, you can almost go the other way - they can trust you so much that you have total responsibility for what you do and you'd rather other people had some as well. So you phone up the A&R dept and say, 'Well what do you think of the record?' Sometimes you want that feedback, and they all seem frightened to say anything."

AT the MOMENT, there's nothing to say. "Nothing Has Been Proved"; the theme to Scandal and their new single for Dusty Springfield, is a classic: perfect English pop. There are two versions of how the three first came to collaborate on "What Have I Done To Deserve This". Neil says the track was intended for their first album, "Please", but when Dusty turned it down, they refilled to record it at all, saving it until she changed her mind. Dusty denies it all. "To this day they still say that they sent me a tape of the song for their first album, but I don't know where they got the story from because I didn't see any tape. When I did, I said yes immediately, because I saw the potential. I think they thought that by now I'd be some kind of spaced-out Californian who wasn't aware of anything that was going on in England, and they were quite surprised that I knew who they were and what they were doing." Holding court in a London hotel a week before, Dusty was in fine form, It's easy to see why she and the Pet Shop Boys get on: both keep tongues firmly in cheek, share a love of American soul music, and have a healthy cynicism about the industry they work in; "Record companies are full of shit," opines Dusty. The new single was a departure for the Pet Shop Boys: an orchestra was bought in; Courtney Pine played a haunting sax solo; and the result is a strangely affecting ballad that should put one of Britain's finest singers back in the charts. "I can't believe we made it, to be honest," says Neil. "It's not like the records we've made before; it's very grown up. "It's a bit more me than them," agrees Dusty. "It's not a dance record. They write songs chat don't take a lot of interpretation, and you have to iron out the expression because that destroys the song. I had to unlearn my vocal mannerisms Co get it right, because that's how Neil sings. He's very fiat; you almost have to talk it."

It's the lyrics that worry her. They're so specific, she says, wondering what younger listeners will make of it all. I tell her they'll make up their own story, their own tabloid scandal, and she looks relieved. "I underestimate people." Her own memories of the Profumo affair are less than clear, too: "I was still in The Springfield's when it happened, I think. We split in November '63 and my first solo record came out three weeks later. I was so focused on other things, I wasn't really paying attention. I was also very innocent then, so I really didn't know what they were talking about." Dusty wants to work with Phil Collins now; she wants to do ballads and prove that if Whitesnake can have a hit with a slow song, so can she. There are no plans to revive the old material, to stick a coffee percolator noise behind them and call them the '89 remix. "I'd blow my brains out before I did that," she says. "It's not that I wait to put down the last, but it is the past."

Chris agrees: "If you think something's good, why change it? You wouldn't do a remix of 'What's going On' by Marvin Caye, would you? Well actually, maybe people would these days, a whole tragic house mix of it, but I don't think that's right." Marshall Jelerson was asked to do a remix of "Nothing Has Been Proved", but proved unwilling because he thought it was simply fine as It was. The Pet Shop Boys see his point but are unable to resist the lure of the remix. The idea of someone pulling apart your music and making it into something new appeals to them, and even the tacky Euro remixes of their early Bobby 0 recordings that surface from time to time are enjoyed. "We never think of it as a marketing device," insists Chris. "It's mote than that for us. I think we never realise the dance potential of our records the first time. The reason we do a remix is because we get a very good pop record, but we could always go further in a dance direction. Also I always want to change it - I never see something as being finished, and there's always another way of doing it all that's completely different. I just find that exciting."

THE PET SHOP BOYS made their stage debut at London's ICA, during a Rock Week. Chris's computer kept crashing, and a strobe light shone right in Neil's face so he couldn't see where his hands were on the keyboard. It was abysmal. The next day, Tom phoned them at their homes to see if they were awake. When they answered yes, he told them it was more than they had been the night, before. They have rarely played live since, and the cost of putting on the kind of show expected of them now would be prohibitive. Their last album sold as many as "Lovesexy" in the States, but while Prince is rumoured to be on the verge of bankruptcy, they're quite comfortable. They don't have an entourage to keep, or an empire to support. They just have Bobby 0: when they left his management and signed to EMI, it was part of the buy-out deal that he got a share of the first three albums. The Boys readily agreed - no-one actually believed they'd make three albums, let alone get anyone to buy them. The current decision weighing on their minds concerns their cover of Sterling Void's house anthem "It's Airtight". Already a track on the "Introspective" LP, it now also exists in a radically different form which may or may not become the next single. Later, Chris wants to go out. I suggest it might help to heat the track in a club, so we take a cassette and head down to Pyramid, where DJ Ian B finally plays the track at around 2am. Seconds earlier, Chris had been dancing round a pillar at the edge of the dance-floor with a grin on his flee, but when I look to see his reaction, he's doubled up in embarrassment, refusing to look towards the floor. Most artists, when hearing their own record in a club, run out to dance. Read casualties act out their videos while doing so, and hopeless cases even walk up to the booth pretending to he fans and ask for the record to he played. Liza Minelli's new producer prefers to take up the fatal position. "I feel so exposed!" he winces. "I hate this!" That's show-busines

March 1989: The Face